


Stages of grief

by KS_Claw



Category: Guardians of Childhood & Related Fandoms, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, This was written before Book Four came out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 20:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KS_Claw/pseuds/KS_Claw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is said that there is five stages to the cycle of grief. Kozmotis Pitchiner has to work through each of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stages of grief

**Author's Note:**

> So I remembered that I had this one lying around unfinished. Even with the new things revealed in the fourth book, I went ‘fuck it’ and stuck to the RP canon I’ve developed with friend KPitchiner.
> 
> Auriga is an asshole we developed for RPs, along with the "Shadow cult" mentioned. He won’t be missed. With that being said, enjoy!

**Denial**  
  
A part of him refused to think about it at first. Any moment now, this would all turn out to have simply been a bad dream, and Kozmotis would wake up in bed to the feeling of his wife’s warm body curled up against him, if she hadn’t gotten up already to start making breakfast, so that her husband would be waking up to the smell of coffee.  
  
Ebony was not dead. She had not been brutally stabbed in the heart by a Dream Pirate during a Fearling attack, and her body was not slowly going cold and stiff in his arms as he held her close, wailing out his grief along with their young daughter, who kept asking her daddy why mommy wouldn’t wake up.  
  
It took Seraphina and his most trusted officer to finally allow the medics to take Ebony’s body away. And while Kozmotis hated that it had to be like this, he had no choice.   
  
_Any moment now, let this be a bad dream that I can wake up from._ Kozmotis silently begged, as he now picked up his crying daughter and held her close. _We both need her, please please please let this just be a bad dream._  
  
But it was not a bad dream. And at the end of the day, he was a father first and his daughter needed him. The Golden Army could handle itself without him for a few measly days or weeks.  
  
Or however long it would take him to stop realizing this was no dream, and that the love of his life had so cruelly been torn away from him, the same way he now felt as if his heart had been torn out of his chest.  
  
 **Anger**  
  
Auriga was really not surprised when the Golden General showed up in his cell at the Taurus Prison Facility. Really, it had only been a matter of time.  
  
“There has been some new evidence.” Kozmotis Pitchiner stated coolly, as he regarded the other man through the bars of the prison door. “It will make your sentence harder. Perhaps even put you up for death.”  
  
“And you would just love that, wouldn’t you, _Kozzy._ ” Auriga chuckled. His unkempt looks and a certain look in his eyes gave him the appearance of a mad man, and for all anyone cared, he probably was.   
  
Kozmotis narrowed his eyes, but he calmly brought out the report that informed him of the damning evidence.   
  
“Witnesses have seen you conspire with known Shadow Cult members. This evidence will be brought before the court, and the jury will decide then what is to be done with you.”  
  
“’Witnesses.’” Auriga scoffed. “And how many of those are amongst the men and women you arrested, when your toy soldiers raided my house?”   
  
Kozmotis ignored him. “Court will be held tomorrow. You will be granted access to a shower and a barber, to make you look presentable if you so wish.” With that, he turned and began to walk down the corridor.   
  
“I was right there, you know!” Auriga called after him. “When Ebony died, that is.” He laughed at that, but the only sign that Kozmotis heard him, was the force of the door he slammed shut behind him.  
——  
  
The trial went smoothly, or so some people would say. It was a simple matter of Auriga being sent in, and the Tsar Lunanoff himself convicting the man of his crimes. Even as Auriga began to laugh in the face of the Tsar and the jury and even at his guards, as they began to drag him off.  
  
As the Golden General, it was Kozmotis Pitchiner’s duty to escort the man to the Prison Planet, where he would be locked in, along with the other criminals who had conspired in what had become known as the Nightmare Coup attempt, the very plot that had gotten Auriga confirmed as a Shadow cultist.  
  
They had barely left the airspace of the planet, before Auriga began to giggle, as two guards pulled him towards the hold of the ship.  
  
“You know what I regret the most?” He snickered, grinning madly at the Golden General. “That I couldn’t have gotten a hold of your little brat too. But hey!” His grin grew wider, “if it hadn’t been for her squealing like a pig, when I opened that tear, Ebs would probably still be alive!”  
  
The rest happened in an almost inhumanly fast manner. In what felt like only two steps, Kozmotis had gone over and had pushed the two guards aside, before grabbing hold of Auriga, forcing him to turn his head so that Kozmotis could look him in the eyes.  
  
For a moment, he was tempted to snarl at Auriga, tempted to tell him how he had no right to misuse his wife’s name, how he was not worthy to even think about her… But his anger spoke for him instead, and with a hard, and loudly vicious _**CRACK**_ , he had twisted Auriga’s neck. The man’s body gave a violent twitching, then went limp in the Golden General’s grasp. It hit the deck with a heavy **_thud_** as Kozmotis released it, before he stepped back and turned, walking away with stiff, but heavy footsteps.  
  
“Figures that gravity would do him in.” One of the commanders said in a conversational tone, “thought I told the guys in the engine room to fix that damn gravity module already.”  
  
“Good people are hard to come by these days,” one of the two guards agreed, absently toeing the body with his boot, as if it might come back to life and bite him. “Sooo… What do we do about this?”  
  
The commander shrugged. “Put it on ice for now. We’ll let the General decide later.”  
  
 **Bargaining**  
  
 _Cosmos, please…_ Kozmotis thought quietly to himself, as he looked up at the stars. Why couldn’t it have been him?   
  
All these titles, all the power and wealth that followed with it… he had never cared for it. He just wanted her back. Seraphina needed her mother, and he… Kozmotis needed his wife. With her death, his soul might as well have gone with her in the grave.   
  
_Please… I’ll do anything._

Anything to have her in his arms again, to be able to wake up next to her body curled up against his, or with Sera lying between them. He knew that it had only been a few weeks since the funeral, but it felt as if it had been over a hundred days and nights, when he had found himself waking up in the middle of the night, either because he in dreams saw Ebony get stabbed by the Dream Pirate, or because Seraphina was crying out in her sleep for her mother.

 _Please please please please…_ He thought miserably. _Anything at all._

  
 **Depression**  
  
It was only work and Seraphina these days that kept him going. That, and the bottle of scotch that he had taken to help himself to almost every night before bed. The alcohol was the cheap kind that tasted foul, but it helped him sleep and kept him from dreaming.   
  
And every morning, he pulled himself out of bed and cleaned himself up, and made certain to brush his teeth and down some breakfast so that Sera wouldn’t have to complain about his bad breath. After that, licorice or peppermint roots. Whatever would remove the foul taste on the back of his tongue, before he had to endure it again, come night time.  
  
 **Acceptance**  
  
Some days felt like they passed by in a rush, but those were also the days where Kozmotis buried himself in work. Other days, when he was at home with Seraphina, dragged by painfully. He did his best to appear in a good mood around his daughter, but that was all he ever achieved. An appearance. It was like putting on an invisible mask, that he eventually began to put on around others.  
  
He knew that someone had to take care of Seraphina as well as the house, especially when he was attending his duties in the army, and not at court. So he found a young house maiden named Dwyn, who was more than happy to take care of all the chores and basic needs of the place.   
  
It was the Tsarina herself who suggested a Pooka as her homeschooling teacher. She had known one herself when she was young, she told Kozmotis, and it had done wonders. It would especially be a help since Seraphina couldn’t be looked after at court all the time, and a young lady needed a good teacher. Kozmotis had simply smiled and nodded, and promised he would look into it.   
  
It turned out to be the best advice he had ever listened to, for more reasons than just the fact that the Pooka became the best friend his daughter would ever have.  
  
Hazel was young for a Pooka, and had experience with children in the form of having helped out with his own siblings.   
  
That he punched Kozmotis in the face for drinking too much kind of helped too. Little by little, the alcohol was replaced by simple hard work. And while he still dreamed of Ebony, and of the life they had once had, the dreams didn’t hurt as much as they used to.  
  
One morning, Kozmotis woke up from a wonderful dream, where he had simply been in bed with Ebony. They hadn’t done anything, they had simply just been happy to lie there together. And when he woke up, and found that she wasn’t there…  
  
He wouldn’t deny that he was disappointed. But he brushed that aside, and decided instead to just get up and get on with his day. There had been a report of a ship of Dream Pirates, supposedly one of the last of the nasty critters. All the others of their kind had been captured, and shipped off to the prison planet.  
  
Better to get it over with, the Golden General thought darkly. Better to lock them away for good. And that way, no one will ever lose a loved one again to those things.  
  
Ebony would have wanted that, a part of him thought.


End file.
